80 WILLIAM BARTRAM 



racoons . . . , which are excellent meat " (p. 63). As a mat- 

 ter of fact, though, even Chateaubriand finds it necessary to 

 mention on occasion that "A fire was kindled to cook our 

 supper " ^ or that he " made a sorry supper." ^° But he is gen- 

 eral and vague; where Bartram is selective and vivid. One 

 writes of travels, the other travels. 



Camping places and food, then, can not be overlooked in a 

 consideration of the elements of Bartram' s landscape. They 

 lend an atmosphere of reality to his descriptions which purely 

 imaginative writers do not have. They provide a basis of truth 

 for our appreciation of his more exalted descriptions. Starting 

 with these practical objects, because of their immediate appeal 

 to him, he is free to indulge his other interests, which were 

 numerous and varied. Professor Lane Cooper's phrase about 

 Bartram' s eye " that nothing escapes " ^^ is indeed justified 

 almost literally. Animals and vegetation, men and manners, 

 Indian mounds and birds' nests, the play of light or the raging 

 of a storm, everything attracts his attention and leaves a 

 sharp impression on his mind. It is possible, however, to reduce 

 Bartram's interests to some classifiable order by saying that they 

 comprehend three types: scientific, aesthetic, and philosophical. 

 The landscape, therefore, that Bartram has depicted is the 

 result of the observation of a scientist, poet, and philosopher, 

 a combination which was unique in his day and which has kept 

 his work alive into our own day. 



As a scientist Bartram speciali2ed in botany, although the 

 term " natural science," which was most often applied to his 

 profession, in Bartram's day covered a multitude of other scien- 

 tific fields. It is true, nevertheless, that the " vegetable king- 

 dom " came first among his interests and that his travels were 

 undertaken for the purpose of discovering '" rare and useful 

 productions of nature " chiefly in that kingdom {Travels, l) . 

 That he did not narrowly confine himself to the main purpose, 

 but loitered along, watching the stars, and alligators, and In- 

 dians, and hundreds of other objects outside of the vegetable 

 kingdom, was a loss to Dr. Fothergill, who paid for these trav- 



^Ibid., p. 114. 



^'^ Ibid., p. 119. '^^ Cambridge History of American Literature, I, 196. 



